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I'll bet George Bernard Shaw had just gotten home after partying with a bunch of 50-something friends complaining of neck, knee and back issues when he penned his now classic quote, "Youth is wasted on the young."
I'll bet he was also suffering from a host of aches and pains himself when he lamented his lost youth with so memorable a phrase. But, while I understand the essence of Shaw's words, I sure don't subscribe to them.
That's because, as I turn 59 this Sunday, I'm enjoying a much fuller and more rewarding life now than I did ever did as a youth (Note the side-by-side photographs of Repman today, and his 24-year-old younger self).
When I was 24, I had no real idea about the world at large, emerging trends or what was, or wasn't, important in my newly-chosen profession. Sure, I knew how to write a press release, generate placements and manage a client relationship. But, beyond that, I was clueless. I had no real opinions about politics, business or technology. My focus was work and women. Period.
I considered myself physically fit, but did little more than run a few miles every day. And my diet rivaled that of the pre-stomach band Chris Christie's. Believe it or not, I feasted on a steady diet of McDonald's and Devil Dogs.
The 24-year-old me would have never contemplated mountain climbing as a pursuit. It simply never entered my consciousness. Today, though, I can say I've successfully summited mountains in the Alps, the Andes, the Rockies and Tanzania. The 24-year-old me wouldn't have been up to the physical, mental or emotional demands needed to climb the Empire State Building much less Mt. Kilimanjaro.
As a young man, I envied the likes of Johnny Carson, George Carlin and Richard Pryor. But, I never would have thought of performing stand-up comedy or improvisation in front of a live audience. I simply didn't possess the self-awareness, self-confidence and self-deprecating sense of humor necessary to succeed on stage. Now, I perform all the time and all over the country.
And, back in 1978, I positively adored Muhammad Ali. But, I never would have contemplated putting on a pair of gloves and learning to box. Now, I do it twice a week.
The young Repman could never have churned out a fresh blog on a daily basis either. I wouldn't have known where to begin. Ditto for my column on Inc.com. I simply lacked the intellectual depth and rigor.
So, Mr. Shaw, I must say that I vehemently disagree with your observation. Youth isn't wasted on the young. At least not all the time. And, certainly not in my case.
I'm hoping there are others who agree with my disagreement.
Either way, I'd love to hear from readers of a certain age. Do you agree with me? Or, like G. B. Shaw, do you feel youth is indeed wasted on the young?


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Surrey combines closeness to the UK's capital with stunning countryside. It is one of the most densely populated parts of the UK, yet nearly a quarter of it is covered in woodland, and it is also known for its heathland and golf courses.
It is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs.
With borders on Greater London, Kent, East and West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire, affluent Surrey offers an extensive commuter belt of towns and villages, and enjoys excellent transport links. There are good schools, superb shopping opportunities and low crime rates.
Property in Surrey is very varied, with the south leafier and more rural than northern areas. In the more southerly districts, you'll find charming villages, traditional country pubs and rolling hills.
Across the county, you'll find a great variety of homes from different periods and in different styles. There are Victorian, genuine and mock Georgian properties, plus terraces and late Victorian villas, as well as 1930s buildings.
South of Guildford, there are examples of architecture designed by Edwin Lutyens, one of England's most distinguished 19th century architects. There are also more modern properties, from town centre flats in purpose-built blocks to contemporary estates in suburban areas.
For those who don't wish to commute into London, there are plenty of major employers based locally - from large corporations to the NHS to Surrey University.
The county is blessed with a myriad of places for great days out - such as Kew Gardens, Thorpe Park and Hampton Court. Surrey is also home to countless lovely landscapes, from Box Hill to the Devil's Punch and Frensham Common, while the Surrey Hills are an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Surrey has many routes into London, with Guildford, Redhill and Woking the main commuter towns. It lies on both the south western and Brighton mainlines.
For air travel, London's biggest airports, Gatwick and Heathrow, are both close at hand.
Three major motorways pass through the county: the M25, M3 and M23. Other main roads include the A3 London to Portsmouth route, the A24 to the Sussex coast, and the A31 Guildford to Bere Regis trunk road.
Excluding sixth form colleges, there are over 50 state schools across Surrey, along with dozens of independents. Some districts have integral sixth forms, others have separate sixth form colleges.
In addition to the University of Surrey in Guildford, the county boasts the University of Creative Arts at Farnham, and Egham's Royal Holloway, part of London University.
In such a large and varied county so close to London, house-hunters are bound to find an ideal property to call home.
Find houses in Surrey or flats in Surrey with Rightmove.co.uk - the UK's number one property website. Rightmove is the best place to find the very latest property for sale in Surrey. You can also find property to rent in Surrey, a list of estate agents in Surrey or view sold house prices in Surrey.
Take a look at our current list of property for sale in Surrey. Rightmove.co.uk lists over one million flats and houses to buy or to rent across London and the UK. We update our listings continuously. You may also want to see houses and flats in other areas of England, including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, West Sussex, Isle Of Wight and East Sussex.

subset: commoncrawl


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January 28, 2013
Hand and dyepot: Textile, apparel art exhibit
Submitted by Erin Monfort-Nelson
This week only, original textile and apparel art designed by graduate student artists will be on display in the Grad Space Gallery on the second floor of Willard Hall. The gallery is open daily from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Jan. 28 to Feb 1.
All creative pieces on display were colored with natural dyes and earth pigments, a more environmentally sustainable option for coloration of apparel, textiles and other mediums. Exploring cultural, elemental, and environmental themes the exhibit combines apparel design, ceramics and textile surface design.
Participating artists are: Hayat Albloushy, apparel, textiles and interior design; Lauren Karle, ceramics; Ying Ma, electrical and computer engineering; Erin Monfort-Nelson, apparel, textiles and interior design; and Grit Vece, adult education.
Faculty mentor is Sherry Haar, department of apparel, textiles and interior design, College of Human Ecology. All garments and textile art were created for partial fulfillment of AT800: Surface Design.
The event is sponsored by the Apparel and Textile Graduate Student Organization.


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This is an excellent piece - fairly objective assessment! He has given credit where it belongs and critique where needed. Mike Ghouse
India's New Face: Narendra Modi
India's New Face: Narendra Modi
April 2009
April 2009
John Henry Claude Wilson/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis
IF THE SPIRIT of modern India has a geographic heartland it is Gujarat, the northwestern state bordering Sindh, in Pakistan. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the mahatma—Sanskrit for "great soul"—was a Gujarati, born in Porbandar, on the Arabian Sea, in 1869. The signal event of the Indian independence movement was the Salt March that Gandhi, joined by thousands, led in March 1930 across Gujarat, from the Sabarmati Ashram 241 miles south to Dandi, on the Gulf of Cambay. There Gandhi picked up a handful of salt on the beach and defied the British law prohibiting the collection or sale of salt by anyone but the colonial authorities. "Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor," Gandhi wrote. In a letter to the viceroy he argued, "I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil."
Gandhi's identification with the poor was intrinsic to his universalist philosophy. As he put it:
I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. It means in its nakedness that in order to achieve the supposed good of 51 per cent the interests of 49 per cent may be, or rather, should be sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine and has done harm to humanity. The only real dignified human doctrine is the greatest good of all.
To protect the poor against the ravages of capitalism, which benefits only the majority rather than everyone, India would adopt socialism after independence. More to the point, although the Hindus would numerically dominate, they could not ignore or trample the rights of tens of millions of Muslims. Indeed, the "greatest good" necessitated that the conscience of the new nation and the ruling Congress Party be avowedly secular.
But the spirit of India has undergone an uneasy shift in this new era of rampant capitalism and of deadly ethnic and religious tensions, which arise partly as violent reactions against exactly the social homogenization that globalization engenders. Gujarat finds itself once again at the heart of what is roiling India, and what singularly menaces the country's rise to "Great Global Power" status. India is home to 154 million Muslims, the third-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. India has arguably more to lose from extremist Islam than any other country in the world. Yet, as Dwijendra Tripathi, a historian based in Gujarat, lamented to me, "The Hindu-Muslim divide here is worse than at any time since the partition." Not coincidentally, this rift is deepening even as Gujarat booms economically, with brand-new malls, multi plexes, highways, and private ports transforming it into a pulsing region-state athwart Indian Ocean trade routes.
Gujarat's heightened religious tensions stem from "2002," as it is simply called by everybody in Gujarat and the rest of India. In the local lexicon, that year has attained a symbolism perhaps as resilient as the force of "9/11" for Americans. It connotes an atrocity that will not die, a sectarian myth-in-the-making that constitutes a hideous rebuke to Gandhi's Salt March. And at its epicenter stands another charismatic Gujarati, Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, an icon of India's economic growth and development, and a leading force in the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata (Indian People's) Party, or BJP.
What local human-rights groups label the "pogrom" began with the incineration of 58 Hindu train passengers on February 27, 2002, in Godhra, a town with a large Muslim population and a stop on the rail journey from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh, in north-central India. The Muslims who reportedly started the fire had apparently been taunted by other Hindus who had passed through en route to Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, on their way to demonstrate for a Hindu temple to be built on the site of a demolished Mughal mosque. Recently installed as chief minister, Modi decreed February 28 a day of mourning, so that the passengers' funerals could be held in downtown Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city. "It was a clear invitation to violence," writes Edward Luce, the Financial Times correspondent in India, in his book, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. "The Muslim quarters of Ahmedabad and other cities in Gujarat turned into death traps as thousands of Hindu militants converged on them." In the midst of the riots, Modi approvingly quoted Newton's third law: "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Mobs coalesced and Hindu men raped Muslim women, before pouring kerosene down their throats and the throats of their children, then setting them all on fire. Muslim men were forced to watch the ritualistic killings before they, too, were put to death. More than 400 women were raped; 2,000 people, overwhelmingly Muslim, murdered; and 200,000 more made homeless throughout the state.
The killers were dressed in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the uniform of the RSS, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (Organization of National Volunteers)—the umbrella group of the Hindu nationalist movement—and came armed with swords and gas cylinders, as well as electoral registers and computer printouts of addresses. The police stood by and observed the killings, and in some cases, according to Human Rights Watch, helped the rioters locate Muslim addresses. As for the 200,000 made homeless, the Gujarati state government provided very little in the way of relief, or compensation for the loss of life and businesses. Today, much of Ahmedabad's Muslim population remains sequestered in squalid relief communities that Modi once called "baby-making factories."
For all its carnage and horrors, 2002 also continues to echo because of Modi's subsequent political success. In a remarkable three terms as chief minister, he has never apologized, has never demonstrated regret of any sort for 2002, and has become a hero to the Hindu nationalist movement. Furthermore, his machine-like efficiency, financial probity, and dynamic leadership of the government bureaucracy have made Gujarat a mecca for development, garnering more internal investment than any other state in India. Migrants, both Hindu and Muslim, from throughout India have been streaming into Gujarat to find work at its expanding factories.
There is an element of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore in Modi's Gujarat. What's more, Modi's hypnotic oratory and theatrical flair have led some to compare him to Hitler. Certainly he is the most charismatic Indian political leader to emerge since Indira Gandhi in the 1970s.
Of course, Modi is neither Lee Kuan Yew nor Adolf Hitler. He is what he is, a new kind of hybrid politician—part CEO with prodigious management abilities, part rabble-rouser with a fierce ideological following—who is both impressive and disturbing in his own right. While Barack Obama may give hope to millions in the new century, a leader like Modi demonstrates how the century can also go very wrong when charismatic politicians use modern electoral tactics and technology to create and exploit social divisions, and then pursue their political and economic goals with cold bureaucratic efficiency. And here is why Modi is so important: although he is not his party's standard-bearer going into this spring's national elections, his popularity and influence in the BJP mean that he could one day be governing the world's largest democracy.
AS HINDU IDEOLOGUE and innovative CEO of Company Gujarat, Modi in many ways embodies his state's history: his character testifies to Gujarat's vibrant, outward-looking entrepreneurial spirit and its hard-edged communalism, and his trajectory follows the larger trends that have brought the state, and the country, to this uneasy moment.
Gujarat's vast seaboard—the longest in India—looks westward to the Middle East and Africa, and so Gujarat has been a land of trade and migration. During the age of British imperialism, Gujarati businessmen sold cloth to Yemenis and were paid in silver, which they then lent to English merchants, who bought Yemeni coffee, sold it, and repaid their lenders, so that the Gujarati businessmen made a double profit. In the 19th century, large Gujarati communities sprang up in British East Africa. Later, when America beckoned and loosened its visa restrictions, Gujaratis flooded to its shores, becoming, among other things, motel proprietors and Silicon Valley software tycoons.
Faith—both Hindu and Muslim—underpinned the business networking, providing a social and cultural framework. Thus have two devout, highly distinct ethnic and religious communities operated easily within Gujarat's cosmopolitan framework. Even as the state leads India in electronic governance and indexes of economic freedom, it also has the tightest dietary restrictions; alcohol is prohibited in this land of Gandhi, and vegetarianism (partly the result of the religious influence of the Jains) is widespread. Indeed, Hindus in Gujarat negatively associate meat-eating with the late-medieval Mughals, the Muslim conquerors from Central Asia who were another critical factor shaping the Gujarati historical experience.
Gujarat's post on a frontier zone of the subcontinent exposed the state to repeated Muslim invasions. Some of the worst depredations came at the hands of the Turco-Persian ruler Mahmud of Ghazni, who swept down from eastern Afghanistan and in 1025 destroyed the seaside Hindu temple of Somnath. During a trip to India last fall, whenever I mentioned the events of 2002 to Hindu nationalists, they would lecture me about the crimes of Mahmud of Ghazni. For these Hindus, the past is alive, as if it happened yesterday.
This combination of geography and history has made Gujarat fertile ground for Hindutva (Hindu-ness) and for the Hindu nationalist movement that first emerged in the 1920s and that has since given birth to a wide range of Hindu organizations, beginning, most notably, in 1925 with the RSS, a vast, volunteer-driven self-help corps. As members of the Hindu nationalist movement such as Vijay Chauthaiwale, a molecular biologist, told me, the RSS provided a "true Hindu voice lost by the pro-Muslim tilt of the Congress Party. Muslims invaded in earlier centuries. They conquered," he told me. "We lost. The British conquered. We lost. We were a defeated society. We needed to come together as Hindus."
Narendra Modi, who was born into a middle-caste family in Gujarat in 1950, joined an RSS-inspired student group, going on to become a pracharak—a "propagator," or propagandist—for the RSS itself. Unmarried, the pracharaks live sparely, inspiring hundreds of workers while trying to remain faceless, in an effort to eliminate their own egos. The average pracharak serves only two or three years before marrying and resuming a normal life. Modi is unusual. He was a pracharak for close to a decade. In 1987, he joined the BJP, which had been founded in 1980 to advance Hindutva in the political sphere. One year later, he became the party's state general secretary.
Modi entered the political arena just as larger forces were propelling the BJP forward. Information technology enabled standardized and ideologized versions of Hinduism and Islam to emerge: just as Shiites became united across the Middle East, Hindus became united across India, and the same for Sunni Muslims. Meanwhile, the spread of education made people aware of their own histories, supplying them with grievances that they never had before. "The Hindu poor are blissfully ignorant of Mahmud of Ghazni. It is the middle class that now knows this history," explained one local human-rights worker. That is why Hindu nationalism is strongest not among the poor and uneducated, but among the professional classes: scientists, software engineers, lawyers, and so on. In the eyes of this new, right-wing cadre of middle- and upper-middle-class Hindus, India was a civilization before it was a state, and while the state has had to compromise with minorities, the civilization originally was unpolluted (purely Hindu, that is)—even if the truth is far more complex.
The economic reforms of the 1990s, which brought India truly into the vanguard of globalization, aggravated these Hindu-chauvinistic tendencies. Because the socialistic nation-state of Hindus and Muslims had become a thing of the past, both groups needed a strengthened communal identity to anchor them inside an insipid world civilization. This need has been especially apparent among Gujaratis living overseas: even as successful immigrants in the United States, they have engaged in a search for roots that they have transmitted back to relatives at home.
Against this backdrop, Modi has gone from strength to strength. Promoted in 1995 to become the BJP's national secretary, he helped orchestrate the party's rise to power. After taking over the chief ministership in the wake of a disastrous earthquake, in 2001, he has been reelected twice, becoming Gujarat's longest-serving leader. During his visits to villages, pregnant women regularly touch his feet so that their newborn will be like him. He is so honest that gifts for him are regularly deposited in the state treasury—a far cry from the corruption and nepotism that are so routine in Indian government. Even those Indians who despise Modi's politics acknowledge his skill and power.
MODI'S OFFICE IS on an upper floor of a massive, scabby-faced ministry building in Gandhinagar, the planned city of government workers north of Ahmedabad that is a monument to the flawed architectural schemes of formerly socialist India. Outside his door, Western businessmen and investors in expensive suits clustered after meetings with the chief minister. At 5 p.m. sharp, I was ushered in. Modi sat behind a desk that looked over a long committee table. He wore traditional paijama pants and a long, elegant brown kurta—ironically, the traditional dress of India imported by the Mughals. A row of pens lined his pocket. Rimless glasses rested on his face. He had a clipped and distinguished salt-and-pepper beard. His was a handsome, welcoming visage. A small stack of documents lay in front of him. He thrust them at me before I even asked my first question. "I heard you were interested in development here, so here are your answers." What he gave me was not the usual promotional brochures, but long lists of sourced statistics put together by an aide. Gujarat had experienced 10.2 percent annual GDP growth since 2002. It had eight new universities. In recent years, almost half the new jobs created in India were in Gujarat. The state ranked first in poverty alleviation, first in electricity generation.
Was Modi trying to create another Singapore or Dubai in Gujarat, a place that would be, in a positive sense, distinct from the mother brand of India?, I asked him.
"No," came the reply. "Singapore and Dubai are city-states. There can be many Singapores and Dubais here. We will have a Singapore in Kutch," he said, waving his arm dismissively, "and GIFT [Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, a new high-tech city planned nearby] can be like Dubai. Gujarat as a whole will be like South Korea. Global commerce is in our blood," he added, lifting his eyebrows for emphasis. There was a practiced theatricality about the way he talked. I could see how he moves crowds, or takes over boardrooms. I have met Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and both Bushes. At close range, Modi beats them all in charisma. Whenever he opened his mouth, he suddenly had real, mesmerizing presence.
His ambition seemed grandiose: South Korea is the world's 13th-largest economy. Yet I could understand the comparison. Like Gujarat, South Korea is a vast peninsula open to major sea-lanes. It emerged as an industrialized, middle-class dynamo, not under democratic rule but under the benign authoritarianism of Park Chung Hee in the 1960s and '70s. I mentioned this to Modi. He said he wasn't interested in talking about politics, just development. Of course, politics represents freedom, and his momentary lack of interest in politics was not accidental. Modi's entire governing style is antidemocratic, albeit quite effective, emphasizing reliance on a lean, stripped-down bureaucracy of which he has taken complete personal control, even as he has pushed his own political party to the sidelines, almost showing contempt for it.
Modi spoke to me in clipped, to-the-point phrases, with a didactic tone, about the cosmopolitan trading history of Gujarat going back 5,000 years, and how Parsis and others had come to its shores and been assimilated into the Hindu culture. I asked him about the contribution of the Muslims, who make up 11 percent of the state's population. "We are a spiritual, god-fearing people," he answered. "We are by and large vegetarians. Jainism and Buddhism impacted us positively. We want to create a Buddhist temple here to honor Buddha's remains." He then prompted me for my next question. He had nothing further to say. His terse responses spoke volumes: Muslims, of course, are meat-eaters.
I asked if he had any regrets about anything he had done or failed to do since becoming chief minister seven years earlier. Again, he had nothing to say. I then asked specifically if he regretted 2002. His answer: "There are so many views about that. Who am I to judge?" He said that a commission would decide about his role in the riots. In fact, a preliminary report by a commission from his own state bureaucracy had already absolved him of any wrongdoing.
"There was no Kalinga effect on Modi," Hanif Lakdawala, a Muslim who runs a human-rights NGO, told me. He was referring to a war fought in the third century B.C. by the Mauryan Empire under King Ashoka against the kingdom of Kalinga on the eastern coast of India. Ashoka's forces slew 100,000 civilians. Yet the slaughter left Ashoka with so much guilt that he dedicated his life thereafter to nonviolence and the peaceful development of his empire.
I wondered if Modi felt differently behind closed doors. By all accounts, after the riots, he manically dedicated himself to development, sleeping less than four hours every night, up at 5 a.m. to check his e-mail and read the local papers, visiting about 3,000 of the 7,000 villages in the state, and empowering the lowest reaches of its bureaucracy through his slogan, "Less government, more governance." As Atul Tandan, director of the Mudra Institute of Communications, in Ahmedabad, told me, "You have to separate Modi's political ideology from his management ability. Because there is not a hint of corruption about him, Modi is effective because people believe his decisions are only results-oriented." Even many Muslims have come to respect Modi for cracking down on the gambling and criminal rackets that have infested some of their communities.
Nevertheless, there were so many ingenious ways Modi could have shown remorse for what happened in 2002 without directly admitting guilt, and he had expressed no interest in doing so. Perhaps it was a Machiavellian ploy: first, allow RSS forces to launch what most neutral observers said was a methodical killing spree in 2002, and then turn toward development after you have used violence to consolidate power and concentrate the minds of your enemies. But Machiavelli believed in using only the minimum amount of cruelty to attain a positive collective result, and thus any more cruelty than was absolutely necessary did not, as he put it, qualify as virtue.
"I am from a poor family," Modi told me. "If I had become a teacher, it would have made my family happy. But I got involved in a national patriotic movement, the RSS, where one must sacrifice. As a pracharak, I was like a Hindu monk in a white dress. My Hindu philosophy: terrorism is the enemy of humanism." I assumed he meant Islamic terrorism, which accounts for most large-scale violent attacks in India. He compared himself to Gandhi: "When the British ruled, so many fought for independence, and Gandhi turned this into a mass movement. I have converted economic development into a mass-movement psychology." His words echoed through the empty room. "I have a toll-free number where callers hear my recorded voice and can make complaints against the government, and the relevant department must respond within a week."
He rolled off his accomplishments: "modern roads, private railroads with double-decker containers, 50,000 kilometers of fiber-optic networks, 2,200 kilometers of gas pipelines, 1,400 kilometers of drinking-water pipelines to 7,000 villages, 24-hour uninterrupted power in rural areas, the first Indian state with private ports, a totally integrated coastal-development plan, two LNG [liquefied natural gas] terminals and two new ones coming on line." Statistics and lists seemed to have a spellbinding effect on him. He quantified everything.
He mentioned, too, the plant to be built in Gujarat by Tata Motors, which will employ several thousand workers to produce the Nano, the world's cheapest car, priced at $2,500. Luring Tata, perhaps India's most prestigious company, to Gujarat had been a coup for Modi, and billboards around Ahmedabad proclaimed his accomplishment. "For so long, the whole coastal area had been subjugated to Mumbai," he said. "But now the richness is coming back home to Gujarat. Gujarat will be the center point for east-west connectivity, from Africa to Indonesia."
He is a very driven man, with no personal life, from what I gathered. He exuded power and control. How could he not have been implicated in the 2002 pogrom?, I asked myself.
A NUMBER OF HINDUS, all of them of the enlightened, cosmopolitan class, as well as Muslims and several foreign writers, told me that Modi's personality contains an element of fascism. Sophia Khan, a human-rights worker, put it bluntly: "He's a fascist man. We Muslims don't exist for him. Our neighborhoods are called mini-Pakistans, while the Hindus live where the malls and multiplexes are."
Is Modi a fascist? Although episodes in his political career and his role in the events of February 2002 suggest as much, the answer is, ultimately, no. "What makes Modi different from Hitler," explained Prasad Chacko, who heads a local NGO, "is that while Hitler thought fascism the end result of political evolution, Modi knows that Hindutva is only a phase that cannot last, so now he focuses on development, not communal divides." In fact, Modi has recently gone after the very Hindu nationalists who put him in power, arresting some members of a Hindu-chauvinist group. He can't or won't apologize for 2002. Therefore, showing that he is less extremist than other Hindu-firsters has become his method for gaining acceptance on the national stage, in advance of running for prime minister, according to Achyut Yagnik, a journalist and historian.
Modi is helped in his ambition by the general atmosphere of civilizational tension. Whether it be the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat posed by Iran, possible chaos in Pakistan, or Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and in India itself, the global situation reminds Hindus—the overwhelming majority of Indian voters—how much they have to fear from Muslim radicalism, and how much Modi signifies a bulwark against it: not through any specific act nowadays, but through the whole aura of his no-nonsense rule. As much as India fears Pakistan, it fears Pakistan's collapse even more. The threat of Islamic anarchy in the region is perfectly suited to the further consolidation of Hindu nationalism, even as intercommunal tension represents, arguably, a more profound threat to the country than even the increasingly drastic shortage of water. What I encountered in interviews with victims of the 2002 violence was not so much radicalization, but alienation from India, evidenced by their withdrawal into their own communities, their reluctance to venture among Hindus.
The corresponding Hindu fear of Islam runs parallel with a more understated but palpable yearning for order. India's rise as an economic and naval power has invited frustrating comparisons with China: whereas the authoritarian government in China can make things happen, development happens in India mainly in spite of the government. Hanif Lakdawala told me that, especially because of the nightmarish chaos of Indian cities, "there are some in this country ready to accept a fascist, or at least a very strong dictator."
Not a fascist, in my opinion, but certainly someone like Modi. As Vimal Ambani, a prominent, liberal-minded Gujarati businessman, told me, "At the end of the day, Modi still offers the best model for governance in India."
OF COURSE, MODI'S record since 2002 has not been perfect. Because of 2002, he has been denied a visa to the United States, and this stigma has hurt foreign investment, even as Gujarat has become the prime destination for domestic deal-making. Despite all the infrastructure projects, Gujarat still ranks low on scales of human development in India: malnutrition afflicts almost half of the children younger than 5, three-quarters of the women suffer from anemia, and two-thirds of the people are literate—barely above the national average.
In fact, what truly prevents Modi from taking the grand leap of his imagination—that is, remaking Gujarat into a kind of antiseptic global entrepôt, like Singapore and Dubai—is the ball-and-chain reality of the Indian landscape itself. Take Ahmedabad, encased in tear-inducing smog, jammed with wailing motorbikes and auto rickshaws, its broken sidewalks punctuated by stray cows and beggars. Founded in 1411 by Ahmed Shah of the Gujarat sultanate, the city was something of a playground for internationally renowned architects in the 1950s, when the Western elite placed newly independent India on a pedestal as the hope of humanity. (Le Corbusier designed the Textile Mills Association Building, and Louis Kahn the Indian Institute of Management.) But with the exception of a few gems, Ahmedabad, with a population of 4.5 million, remains weighed down by the same affliction that ails other Indian cities: little of architectural note or beauty among a handful of truly magnificent medieval Muslim monuments and the mishmash of steel-and-glass Dubai-style dwellings of the newly rich.
India is 37 percent urban. Within the next two decades it will be 50 percent so. Bimal Patel, a local architect and urban planner, explained that the real governing challenge of India's leaders will be to make cities like Ahmedabad more livable and efficient. Under Modi, a new park-and-waterfront project, designed by Patel, is rising along six miles of the Sabarmati River, which runs through Ahmedabad. For the most part, though, the chief minister has avoided the local politics of this and other Gujarati cities.
Modi has also done nothing about the communal cantons that have sprung up under his rule. Now Ahmedabad's old walled city is one of the only areas where Muslims—who make up 9 percent of the city's population—and Hindus can really mix. The most poignant scene I came across during two weeks of wandering around Ahmedabad was at the Sarkhej Roza, the 15th-century mosque-and-tomb complex dedicated to Sheikh Ahmed Khattu, the spiritual adviser to Ahmed Shah. Amid the medieval domes and balconies overlooking a water tank, families picnicked, young couples whispered, children played ball, and young men attended prayer meetings. The architecture, with its elegant stucco and grillwork, blended Islamic and Hindu styles in a composite known as Indo-Saracenic. But at least until the park-and-waterfront project is completed, there is no corresponding mixing of peoples in Ahmedabad today: the crowd at the Sarkhej Roza was exclusively Muslim.
FOR 10 HOURS, I traveled by bus and car from Ahmedabad south to the coast at Diu, the southernmost point of Gujarat's Kathiawar Peninsula, the site of Portuguese monuments that have particular relevance to the larger Indian story.
We drove along broken roads through a never-ending series of hovels, past creaking and dusty carts and the shanties and lean-tos of burlap and rusty corrugated iron that define rural India. On this journey through Gujarat, though, I found paved roads in many places, and running water and electricity just about everywhere. As primitive as the scenes looked, I knew from journeys in poorer Indian states like Bihar and West Bengal that much progress had been made. Still, South Korea? No, not for a few decades at the very least. India could be a great regional power and a pivotal state, but it is not likely to reach the level of development of the East Asian tiger economies.
Diu, a key strategic base for Portugal's Indian Ocean Empire, had been captured from the Ottoman Turks in 1535. The sea gently knocked at the ramparts of the Portuguese citadel, mustard- and lead-colored after centuries of wear. Weeds crept between the stones, wild pigs wandered about, and groups of young men loudly ambled along the stoneworks, seemingly unaware of the significance of this immense curiosity, topped at its highest point by a lonely white cross. The massive Portuguese churches, with their colossal white Gothic facades, stood equally forlorn, their walls faded and leprous. You could actually see and hear the plaster falling at the close wing-beats of the pigeons. Only a few hundred years old, these dilapidated monuments are more like relics from far-back antiquity, so divorced do they seem from the local environment.
As empires rise and fall, only their ideas can remain, adapted to the needs of the people they once ruled. The Portuguese, given only to plunder and exploitation, brought no ideas save for their Catholic religion, which sank little root among Hindus and Muslims. And so these ruins are merely sad and, after a manner, beautiful. The British, by contrast, brought tangible development, ports and railways, that created the basis for a modern state. More important, they brought the framework for parliamentary democracy that Indians, who already possessed indigenous traditions of heterodoxy and pluralism, were able to fit to their own needs. Indeed, the very Hindu pantheon, with its many gods rather than one, works toward the realization that competing truths are what enable freedom. Thus, the British, despite all their flaws, advanced an ideal of Indian greatness. And that greatness, as enlightened Indians will tell you, is impossible to achieve without a moral component.
For as the influence of an economically burgeoning India now seeps both westward and eastward, to the Iranian plateau and to the Gulf of Thailand (the borders of viceregal India and its shadow zones a hundred years ago), it can grow only as a force of communal coexistence, a force that rests on India's strengths as the world's largest democracy. India, in other words, despite its flashy economic growth, will be nothing but another gravely troubled developing nation if it can't maintain a minimum of domestic harmony. Mercifully, the forces of Indian democracy have already survived 60 years of turmoil, attested to by the stability of coalition governments following the era of Congress Party rule. These forces appear sufficiently grounded either to reject Modi at the national level or to contain his worst impulses as he moves—as many expect he will—from Gandhinagar to New Delhi. After all, the churches and bastions in Diu are ruins not because they represent an idea that failed but because they represent no idea at all, whereas India has been an idea since Gandhi's Salt March in 1930. Either Modi will fit his managerial genius to the service of that idea, or he will stay where he is. Hindus elsewhere in India are less communal-minded than those in Gujarat, and that will be his dilemma.
Living history: the Hindu temple at Somnath, one of the most sacred in India, was sacked by a Muslim conqueror in 1025.
BUT IN GUJARAT, at least, peace will not come easy. From Diu I hired a car and drove two hours westward along the coast to Somnath, site of the Hindu temple destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni, as well as by other invaders, and rebuilt for the seventh time starting in 1947.
This temple, with its massive pale-ocher shikhara (tower) and assemblage of domes, sits at the edge of a vast seascape glazed over with heat. The coiled and writhing cosmic scenes on its facade are so complex that they create the sculptural equivalent of infinity. The day I was there, prayer blasted from loudspeakers. It was a madhouse on account of the full moon. Hundreds of worshippers checked their bags at a ratty cloak stand and left their shoes in scattered piles. Signs warned that no mobile phones or other electronic devices would be permitted inside, but I knew better. I put my BlackBerry in my cargo pocket, not trusting it to the mild chaos of the cloak stand, and expecting the usual lackadaisical developing-world frisk. I then joined the long single-file line to enter the temple. At the entrance, I was savagely searched, and my BlackBerry was discovered. I was rightly yelled at, and summoned back to the cloak stand. "Muslim terrorism," one worshipper alerted me. From the cloak stand I got back into line and entered the temple.
Semidarkness enveloped me as worshippers kissed the flower-bedecked idol of a cow. The air was suffocating, as packed-together bodies approached the womb-chamber. I felt as if I were trespassing on a mystery. Though nonbelievers were officially welcomed, I knew that I was outside the boundaries of the single organism of the crowd—the philosopher Elias Canetti's word for a large group of people who abandon their individuality in favor of an intoxicating collective symbol. This sanctum was a pulsating vortex of faith. Some dropped to their hands and knees and prayed on the stone floor. I'd had the same extreme and cloistered sensation at two of the holiest sites of Catholicism and Shiism: the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Czestochowa, Poland; and the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, Iraq (where I had to sneak in with a busload of visiting Turkish businessmen).
You couldn't help but understand Hindu feelings about Muslim depredations of this temple, one of India's 12 Jyotirlingas, or places with "signs of light" that symbolize the god Shiva. And yet, as emotions crackled like electricity all around me, I also couldn't help but think of what Hanif Lakdawala had asked me, in a plea as much as a question: "What can we poor Muslims of today do about Mahmud of Ghazni?"
Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, in Washington, D.C.


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Now as the school year winds down across the country, we'd like to turn to some good news in education. High school graduation rates are at a 40-year high. Across the country, 75 percent of students are earning a high school diploma. That's up from 66 percent just 10 years ago, according to a new report by Education Week. And some of the biggest gains come from Latino and African-American students who are finishing high school at the highest rates ever. We wanted to talk more about this so we've called Chris Swanson - he's the vice president of Editorial Projects in Education - that's a nonprofit group that published this new report together with Education Week. He's here in Washington, D.C. Chris, thanks so much for joining us.
CHRIS SWANSON: It's great to be here.
MARTIN: For additional perspective we've also called Mikala Rahn, who founded Learning Works - that's a charter school dedicated to helping some of those kids who weren't making it across the finish line, who were in fact dropping out in the Los Angeles area. She's with us from member station KPCC, in Pasadena. Mikala, welcome to you, thank you so much for joining us.
MIKALA RAHN: Thank you.
MARTIN: Chris, I'm going to start with you. What's going on here? Why do we see high school graduation rates growing?
SWANSON: We've been looking at this issue in Diplomas Count Report for about eight years now. And, as you've already mentioned, we've seen a really strong rise over this period of time. And this starts at a period - maybe about 10 years ago when the issue of graduation dropout was not even on the national agenda, which is kind of a strange thing to think about at this point in time. A lot of what's behind these increases we're seeing and the consistency across groups is really the consistent focus over the past decade on this as an important issue, educationally as well as how it feeds into the economy.
MARTIN: Are there specific supports that have been put into place? Or do you think it's just more of kind of a talking it up, like a bully pulpit type of situation?
SWANSON: You know, it's a little bit of both. And I think one of the things that we've come to realize, through research and reform that's been going on on the ground, is one of the big challenges that school systems face is understanding what their challenge is. Students who have dropped out, who are at risk of dropping out, are very different from one another and are very different from one community to another. Before, say the past, you know, 10 years, school systems had, surprisingly, little hard data and information about their students, especially ones who had already left. And so a first step being - understanding what the needs of your students are, do you have an over age at-risk population, are these students who are just, you know, struggling academically in general. Once schools and school systems can get their heads around that, then they can think about matchmaking the needs of their students to the solutions that are going to work best for them.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, we are talking about new news about the high school graduation rate in the United States. It is at a 40-year high. We're talking about this with Chris Swanson, he's the vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, he published this new information. Also with us, Mikala Rahn, who founded Learning Works, that's a charter school dedicated to helping kids finish school who have previously dropped out. The rates for Latinos increased by 5.4 percent from 2009 to 2010. And they increased 3.3 percent for African-Americans for the same period. Still around 1 million students nationwide are not graduating on time this graduation season. So Mikala, what have you observed about why kids are dropping out and what kinds of things tend to help them make it across the finish line?
RAHN: One of the concepts in prevention is - yes, awareness helps and higher expectations in schools help. And that helps the graduation rate - meaning students who might be floundering at the school, getting the D's and the F's or hanging out on the benches or the attendance - those are the ones we can quickly grab, if the adults are paying attention, and get them to the stage. And that increases the graduation rate.
I think an interesting concept in the report that we're talking about is the epicenters where there are high dropout rates that still exist, and I work in one of those epicenters, and in those cases, dropouts need a different strategy. In our program, it's completely structured different and the students aren't required to be there all the time, they come for what they need. And so, I think it's important to look at graduation rate and dropout rate separately, and they require different interventions. One's more of a prevention strategy and one's more of an intervention strategy.
MARTIN: To your point, what the report talks about, as you said, epicenters where the graduation rate is either dropping or staying the same - L.A. is one, Chicago is one, Denver, Dallas, Albuquerque, New Mexico is one - Chris, why don't you pick up the thread here. Why do we think this is? I mean, these are urban systems. There's a lot of turnover in a lot of these systems, maybe there's a lot of churning in the student population. Maybe there's a lot of, kind of, people coming and going - a lot of times there are a lot of immigrant groups there too - maybe English isn't the first language. I mean, what are some of the factors that you're seeing here?
SWANSON: Those are all factors that you see a lot. And when we look at this epicenter list, these are school systems that are large and have low graduation rates, and that's what gets you on the list. And so, New York, Los Angeles, you know, the big urban districts tend to be the ones that pop up. Even if there's larger districts elsewhere in the country and it is, I think, what we see in especially kind of big city districts that have histories of low performance, it's a combination of factors - it all comes down in the same place. Our public schools are reflections of the communities they serve. These are often communities that have high rates of poverty, histories of segregation, histories of low performing schools.
They may be well resourced or not but, you know, the dollars aren't everything. Students who are in these communities and often they don't have the good kind of family or neighborhood support set that affluent suburbs would have - these epicenters - there's lots of challenges. There's progress being made - New York is, you know, at the top of the list. It's also by far the largest district in the country. They've been making steady improvements, and so even if you're on the list it doesn't mean that good things can't be happening, but the bar is very high in terms of the level of challenge.
MARTIN: But Mikala, I still want to push you on this sort of question on the kinds of things that you think work here. And you make a point of intervening before kids drop out and also recovering the kids who have already dropped out, and you're saying that you need different strategies here. So let's talk first about the kids before they dropout. What are the kinds of things that you see work?
RAHN: The area that everybody needs to be focusing on is middle school and ninth grade. When you look at a ninth grade transcript - you really know the story, you know if they're UC bound in California, they're going off to Harvard - or if they're in the average pack or if they're struggling to graduate or if they're going to be a dropout. I mean, I see transcripts that have straight F's all the way through ninth grade and they have zero credits. So the prevention student is the one that's hanging on and the intervention student isn't even hanging on.
The schools really need to look at that data early on to make determinations of what's going on with these students and most of it is correlated to poverty. And so how can we put the supports in place to make sure these students are attending and getting the engaging teachers, 'cause it also comes down to relationship relationship. If there is no relationship or reason for that student to be at school, they won't be there.
MARTIN: And the recoverable youth is - it's kind of a terrible term, isn't it, I mean it sounds like recycling - but I understand the intention of it is that maybe the kid's already dropped out but you can get him or her back in. So Mikala, talk a little bit about what are the strategies that you find working there - one of the things you were telling us earlier is just the traditional school day is a nonstarter for this population, why is that?
RAHN: Imagine a student has been out of school for six to eight months. They've been on their couch, they had no one getting them off the couch. There was no parental push - sometimes the parents don't even know that they are a dropout. The schools aren't calling you, they're not coming to find you. If you decide to get off that couch and go back to school, you are not going to go back to school three to six hours a day in a continuation school, you've lost all your habits. And so we've created a school that's very alternative, in that students come like a college to do credits and activities that they need in order to graduate. And the more that they feel the relationship and see the success that they have, the more hours they put in and towards graduation they're there 40 hours plus a week.
MARTIN: Overall though, we've presented this is as good news - is it? I mean, there are still a million kids dropping out every year, in an economy that increasingly requires a lot more education than high school. So Chris, you know, final thought, how should we feel about this? Is this a good news story?
SWANSON: It's good news but I think we should not sit back and rest on our laurels. There are still a million kids a year who are not earning diplomas, that's not enough. And as we've seen the graduation rate increase - the demands for highly educated people in the economy just increase and increase and increase and it's not just that people want more, there's very little for people without at least a high school education to be doing.
Even kind of fields that we've thought about as potentially offering a stable middle-class life in generations gone by - skilled trades, blue-collar work, those jobs either don't exist any ore for the most part or are much more technical and require higher levels of education and training. I think it's good to acknowledge progress where it's been made. But the job's not done and I think anybody who looks at our report or looks at any number of communities around the country can see that even one student falling through the cracks is too many.
MARTIN: Mikala, final thought from you? Is this a good news story?
RAHN: I was surprised by it, because I'm in an epicenter and I'm excited by it because it means that the expectations, I think, have increased. And the issue is - we have more awareness over the issue of dropouts because it is an economy issue, it is something we need to focus on. But in those epicenters, I think everybody needs to do what they can to, as we call it, chase kids back and reengage them in their education.
MARTIN: Mikala Rahn is principal and founder of Learning Works - that's a charter school in the Pasadena area that works to get kids who have dropped out of school back into school. She's also - recently elected to the Pasadena Unified School District Board. She was with us from KPCC, in California. Here in Washington, D.C., Chris Swanson - he's vice president of Editorial Projects in Education. Thank you both so much for joining us.
SWANSON: It's a pleasure.
RAHN: Thank you.
MARTIN: Coming up, it's hard being a modern dad, especially when your kid does something like this...
STEVEN HICKOCKS: (Caller) He had gone onto Facebook and used an alias, made his age to be 18, and he was chatting with friends of his at school in the middle of the night.
MARTIN: Does father still know best? Our panel has been there and serves up some advice just in time for Father's Day. That's next on TELL ME MORE from NPR News, I'm Michel Martin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Not everyone will admit this, but there's something magical about exercise. Your brain produces endorphins in response to vigorous exercise and you feel energized, alert, and alive. You derive tremendous satisfaction from doing something you said you'd do. You feel good about yourself all day long. Beyond
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Most people are aware of the worldwide epidemics of diabetes and obesity. The World Health Organization definition of overweight is a body mass index (BMI) equal to or greater than 25. Obesity is defined as a BMI equal to or greater than 30.1 Worldwide obesity has doubled since 1980. In 2008, 35% of
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The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), one of the world's largest, private, non-profit research organizations, stands at the forefront of basic biomedical science, a vital segment of medical research that seeks to comprehend the most fundamental processes of life. Over the last decades, the institute has established a lengthy track record of major contributions to the betterment of health and the human condition.
The institute — which is located on campuses in La Jolla, California, and Jupiter, Florida — has become internationally recognized for its research into immunology, molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, neurosciences, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, virology, and synthetic vaccine development. Particularly significant is the institute's study of the basic structure and design of biological molecules; in this arena TSRI is among a handful of the world's leading centers.
The institute's educational programs are also first rate. TSRI's Graduate Program is consistently ranked among the best in the nation in its fields of biology and chemistry.
Rather than isolating faculty members, students, and laboratories into separate and distinct disciplines, as is generally prescribed in universities, a cooperative, collaborative spirit is encouraged and embraced. While the level of scientific investigation is intense, the atmosphere is collegial, relaxed, and informal. Technicians, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and administrative support staff all are considered part of the team and are given the latitude and responsibility to accomplish their tasks so as to serve the best interests of science. The pursuit of scientific excellence is paramount and all efforts are directed toward that end.
The bulk of the institute's funding is derived from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. In today's environment of increasing competition for shrinking federal dollars, however, collaborative industrial partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies provide additional funding in several areas key to the organization's research objectives.
The Scripps Research Institute's adherence to the highest scientific standards, emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving, participation in the perpetuation of knowledge through education, and continual pursuit of research excellence provide an unparalleled scientific environment.


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Bitcoin ATM Venice - Coinhub
Coinhub Bitcoin ATM in Venice, Florida
You can instantly buy bitcoin with cash at our Coinhub Bitcoin ATM near Venice, Florida. Coinhub offers $25,000 per day limits and the lowest rates for Bitcoin. Bitcoin ATMs (Automated Teller Machines) are kiosks that allow a person to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by using cash. Bitcoin cash kiosks from Coinhub are a convenient and fast way to purchase Bitcoin and receive it in minutes directly into your wallet. Coinhub Bitcoin machines are easy to use and allow buying at our btc atm to be fast and instant. If you're using a Coinhub Bitcoin Machine near me, you are able to purchase Bitcoin instantly and receive it within minutes. Purchases can be done in under 2 minutes and there is no prior account needed. Simply walk up to any Coinhub Bitcoin ATM to purchase and verify. Many Coinhub Bitcoin ATMs also allow you to both buy AND sell crypto for cash. You can buy Bitcoin using one our Bitcoin ATMs. First, locate the nearest Bitcoin ATM in your area by visiting our Coinhub Bitcoin ATM Locator. Walk up to the machine and enter your phone number. The machine will verify your phone using a code and scan the bitcoin wallet. Enter bills one bill at a time for the amount you would like to purchase and confirm the bitcoin atm prior to purchase. The bitcoin is instantly sent to your wallet. The daily buying limit is $25,000. There are Bitcoin Machines located in major cities across the country. Visit a Coinhub Bitcoin ATM today.
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Venice ( VEH-niss; Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] (listen); Venetian: Venesia or Venexia [veˈnɛsja]) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). In 2020, 258,685 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice (centro storico). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. The city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice for over a millennium, from 697 to 1797.


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Lydia Liu wins inaugural Ada Lovelace Fellowship
CS grad student Lydia Liu (advisers: Michael Jordan and Moritz Hardt) has won the inaugural Microsoft Research Ada Lovelace Fellowship. The new three-year fellowship is for PhD students at North American universities who are members of groups underrepresented in computing and pursuing research aligned to the topics carried out by Microsoft Research. Liu's research aims to establish theoretical foundations for machine learning algorithms to achieve reliable and robust performance. The fellowship comes with a $42K stipend, tuition for three years, and an invitation to the PhD Summit, a two-day workshop where fellows will meet with Microsoft researchers and other top students to share their research.